Disney just announced that it had named Jack Dorsey — chairman and co-founder of social communications company Twitter, and CEO and co-founder of Square, the online payments startup — to its board.

Dorsey is the latest big Internet name to become a director at the entertainment giant. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has served on the board for several years. And Dorsey will be replacing Judy Estrin, well-known technologist and former CTO of Cisco, who has been a Disney director for 15 years.

“Jack Dorsey is a talented entrepreneur who has helped create groundbreaking new businesses in the social media and commerce spaces,” said Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chairman and chief executive officer. “The perspective he brings to Disney and its Board is extremely valuable, given our strategic priorities, which include utilizing the latest technologies and platforms to reach more people and to enhance the relationship we have with our customers.”

“I am honored and humbled to join the Disney Board,” Mr. Dorsey said. “Disney is a timeless company, one we all grow up learning from and admiring.”

Mr. Dorsey is the co-founder of Twitter, the social networking and microblogging service that allows users to create and share ideas and information instantly via messages of 140 characters or less. Mr. Dorsey posted the world’s first Tweet — “just setting up my twttr” — on March 21, 2006, and since then Twitter has grown to include more than 230 million monthly active users worldwide who create about 500 million Tweets every day. Prior to becoming Twitter’s chairman in 2008, Mr. Dorsey was president and chief executive officer.

Mr. Dorsey is also chief executive officer of Square, a commerce company he co-founded in 2009. Headquartered in San Francisco, Square provides innovative products and services for local businesses including a mobile credit card reader, an iPad point-of-sale system, an online marketplace, and a wallet application that allows consumers to make payments using their mobile devices.

Mr. Dorsey attended New York University and Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Mr. Dorsey will stand for election along with the company’s other directors at the annual meeting on March 18, 2014. Pursuant to the tenure policy in the company’s corporate governance guidelines that limits board service to 15 years, Judith L. Estrin will not be standing for re-election.

“Judy has served Disney shareholders incredibly well during her 15 years of service, and we will miss having her on the Board,” Mr. Iger said. “Her insight and advice on technological innovation and our business, as well as her passion for excellence, have been invaluable to me.” Ms. Estrin, who has co-founded eight technology companies and served as chief technology officer and senior vice president of Cisco Systems Inc., is chief executive officer of JLABS, LLC, a privately held company focused on furthering innovation in business, government and nonprofit organizations.

Klarna, the Stockholm-based online payments company, has bought Germany’s Sofort, at a price that sources peg at $150 million.

With the acquisition, Klarna becomes one of the largest independent payments services in Europe, the company said, with about 10 percent market share of the $100 billion European e-commerce market.

“The reason for the acquisition is to do two things: Accelerate the push into Germany, and also to accommodate different needs in different markets,” said Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital, which is an investor, in an interview.

Klarna offers payment solutions — such as a one-click purchase option and pay after delivery via anti-fraud technology — for a wide range of online storefronts across Europe; it did $200 million in revenue last year. It has 15 million users and 15,000 merchants in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria.

The purchase of Sofort, which is the major player in Germany, gives Klarna a definitive dominance there. Sofort has 25,000 online shops in Germany, as well as in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Poland and the U.K.

Klarna, which means “clear” in Swedish, has raised $250 million in funding from Sequoia, as well as from DST and General Atlantic.

It will operate the Klarna and Sofort products separately, and the company noted that the deal still needs approval from Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority. The combined company will have about 1,000 employees — 850 at Klarna and 130 at Sofort.

Klarna has yet to enter the more competitive U.S. market, though sources said it is likely to, eventually.

“There will be a variety of large payments-related companies that develop over the next 10 years and ride around the globe,” said Moritz, who is on Klarna’s board. “So it’s a fruitful place to invest, since the two big trends are towards online commerce and the amount of online commerce being done from mobile device.”

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20131218/swedens-klarna-buys-germanys-sofort-for-150-million/feed/0Payments Startup Clinkle Lays Off Nearly a Quarter of Its Staffhttp://allthingsd.com/20131209/payments-startup-clinkle-lays-off-nearly-a-quarter-of-its-staff/
http://allthingsd.com/20131209/payments-startup-clinkle-lays-off-nearly-a-quarter-of-its-staff/#commentsMon, 09 Dec 2013 18:04:10 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=377619Clinkle, a secretive, much-hyped payments startup, plans to lay off somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 percent to 25 percent of its employees, or about 16 people, AllThingsD has learned. The move was led by former Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy — now Clinkle’s new COO — who wants to bring in more experienced staff. Fortune’s Dan Primack was the first to report the news.
]]>http://allthingsd.com/20131209/payments-startup-clinkle-lays-off-nearly-a-quarter-of-its-staff/feed/0AllThingsD Week in Review: Snapchat's Many Suitors, and Finding the Fastest 4G LTE Signalhttp://allthingsd.com/20131116/allthingsd-week-in-review-snapchats-many-suitors-and-finding-the-fastest-4g-lte-signal/
http://allthingsd.com/20131116/allthingsd-week-in-review-snapchats-many-suitors-and-finding-the-fastest-4g-lte-signal/#commentsSat, 16 Nov 2013 15:00:50 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=373096In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of some of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

Why is Snapchat’s valuation so high? It might be because viewing the service’s ephemeral messages means pressing and holding one’s finger on the screen — an action that would very strongly indicate to advertisers that users are paying attention. In any case, the messaging startup is having its “belle of the ball” moment. Mike Isaac rounded up the potential suitors for an acquisition, and the likelihood of them biting.

If you’re watching streaming video online, chances are it’s coming from either Netflix or YouTube. Those two sites now account for more than half of Americans’ video viewing during peak hours, according to Sandvine.

American wireless carriers are competing to offer 4G LTE mobile coverage in as many cities as possible, as quickly as possible. But whose is the fastest? Walt Mossberg put Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to the test.

BlackBerry has secured $1 billion in financing to keep the company running as it struggles to rebuild itself, but layoffs continue, with nearly 200 employees in Texas sacked earlier this month. In an open letter on Wednesday, interim CEO John Chen laid out the challenges ahead and asserted, “we are not dwelling on the past.”

After reporting that quarterly sales missed expectations, Cisco’s stock dropped more than 10 percent when the company gave analysts some even more discouraging news: 2014 isn’t going to be much better.

Over several months last year, Groupon launched a coordinated and focused price-cutting attack, lowering margins temporarily in a bid to take away some of LivingSocial’s best customers. And it just might have worked.

Industry sources say that, contrary to a report in the Albany Times Union, Apple’s chip manufacturing isn’t coming to upstate New York … at least, not yet. Rather, Samsung will continue to be Apple’s primary manufacturer, but the Korean tech giant will fall back on New York-based GlobalFoundries for multiple devices’ chips — not just Apple’s — if it can’t keep up with demand.

Despite all the hype around mobile payments, consumers still like paying with cards — which is why a startup out of Y Combinator called Coin might have legs. The idea: Scan all your credit, debit and loyalty cards into one scannable card, and use that to pay for everything.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20131116/allthingsd-week-in-review-snapchats-many-suitors-and-finding-the-fastest-4g-lte-signal/feed/0Square Discontinues Monthly Flat-Rate Planhttp://allthingsd.com/20131109/square-discontinues-monthly-flat-rate-plan/
http://allthingsd.com/20131109/square-discontinues-monthly-flat-rate-plan/#commentsSat, 09 Nov 2013 16:42:09 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=371614Square said it is discontinuing a monthly flat-rate plan it had designed for larger businesses.

“Over the past year we heard from many of our customers that caps and limits in the program were inhibiting growth — at a certain point, rates went back up the more you sold,” the company said in a post on its website. “So, effective February 1, 2014, we’re replacing the Square monthly pricing program with one low per-swipe rate for your business. We want our pricing to be simple: no more limits or complicated monthly caps at all. Just one low, flat per-swipe rate for your business.”

The company said those enrolled in the program can keep it through the end of January, but the company said it has no plans to bring back the monthly rate plan.

Square’s standard rates are 2.75 percent of a transaction where a credit card is swiped and 3.5 percent of manually entered charges, plus a 15-cent fee.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20131109/square-discontinues-monthly-flat-rate-plan/feed/0Twitter to Wait Until After IPO to Name Woman -- Likely With International Cred -- to Boardhttp://allthingsd.com/20131027/twitter-to-wait-until-after-ipo-to-name-woman-likely-with-international-cred-to-board/
http://allthingsd.com/20131027/twitter-to-wait-until-after-ipo-to-name-woman-likely-with-international-cred-to-board/#commentsMon, 28 Oct 2013 01:43:08 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=368574

According to sources close to the situation, Twitter is planning on waiting until after its IPO — which is set to take place next week — to name its first woman to its board.

The move makes some level of sense, mostly because it would be difficult to have any new board member join the San Francisco-based social microblogging company now, given that that person would have to sign off on the public offering with little knowledge of its details.

The reason is clear — Twitter is a global player, and runs into thorny issues all over the world around the proliferation of its open service. You might imagine that, in the future, as it grows, the company will face even more international conundrums that it will need a lot of mental heavy lifting to work out.

While the board had put former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the top of its overall list, she has not been contacted about joining as a director. She’s also likely to not be available, either, especially given that she is expected to run for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 election.

(Sorry, but she’s busy, boys! While Twitter chairman and co-founder Jack Dorsey will be bummed, most there actually considered her a very long shot.)

The number of women with international experience is also long. But if I were to bet on whom Twitter is considering for its top picks, I would name only two: Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright.

Albright, among her many diplomatic roles, was the first woman to become the Secretary of State, named in the Clinton administration. She is now a professor of international relations at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service (disclosure: I went there), and is also chairman of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm.

Also — keep up, Peter Fenton! — she is fluent in French, Russian, Czech, Polish and Serbo-Croatian, serves on important boards such as the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Policy Board, and has written five books.

In addition — and this is just from my several encounters with her over the years — Albright takes no guff.

Neither does Rice, who also has some big cred in her corner. Along with other big government posts, she also served as Secretary of State under former President George W. Bush.

The VC firm signed a deal late last year with RiceHadleyGates, the international consulting firm that Rice runs, to “bring global and domestic insight to Khosla’s portfolio companies, helping them achieve their strategic goals in industries such as technology, energy, security and healthcare.”

No matter their gender — although that would also be a plus — either Rice or Albright would certainly be an asset for Twitter. The company has attracted not-undeserved scrutiny over not having a woman — or any diversity at all, really — on its board.

That board now includes: Former Netscape CFO and investor Peter Currie; former News Corp COO and Hollywood mogul Peter Chernin; Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Fenton, of Benchmark Capital; former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt; Jack Dorsey (also CEO and founder of hot payments startup Square); co-founder and serial entrepreneur Evan Williams (now working on an innovative new publishing platform called Medium); and CEO Dick Costolo, who has already attracted controversy over the issue.

The lack of a woman on the board of a company is particularly glaring, given that numerous studies show that more women use Twitter than men, and that it is aiming to be a global company that represents, well, all of humanity.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20131027/twitter-to-wait-until-after-ipo-to-name-woman-likely-with-international-cred-to-board/feed/0AllThingsD Week in Review: Apple Freshens Up & Pinterest and Snapchat See Dollar Signshttp://allthingsd.com/20131026/allthingsd-week-in-review-apple-freshens-up-pinterest-and-snapchat-see-dollar-signs/
http://allthingsd.com/20131026/allthingsd-week-in-review-apple-freshens-up-pinterest-and-snapchat-see-dollar-signs/#commentsSat, 26 Oct 2013 23:59:06 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=368504In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of some of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

Pinterest just got another huge infusion of cash: A $225 million investment round that valued the still revenueless but rapidly growing company at $3.8 billion. The money should help it expand to up to a dozen new countries by the end of the year.

And just shy of Pinterest is Snapchat’s new valuation: Somewhere over $3.5 billion, thanks to a new round that sources said would pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the ephemeral-messaging company.

Two big industry moves in the e-commerce world this week: On Monday, the head of Amazon Prime, Robbie Schwietzer, left to become SVP of operations at Groupon and explained his move to Jason Del Rey. Then, the secretive mobile payments startup Clinkle picked up longtime Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy.

Meanwhile, a management shakeup at Intel has claimed its first casualty: That would be 34-year veteran EVP Dadi “David” Perlmutter, who will leave the company in early 2014.

Fitbit has a new wearable activity tracker: The $130 Fitbit Force. But as Lauren Goode notes in All Things Reviewed, it feels more like Activity Tracking 1.1 than Wearables 2.0.

“Twitter has a music app?” Yes, but probably not for long. The company is strongly considering killing off #Music, just six months after launch.

Walt Mossberg’s fall laptop guide is here, and he has some good news if you’re looking: “The confusing changes in the sagging laptop industry have settled down enough that if you need one, now may be the time to buy one.”

Where does Facebook stand on the presence of controversial and shocking content in its News Feed? Wait a day and ask again. After defending users’ ability to circulate a violent viral video on Monday, Facebook then removed that video from its network on Tuesday.

American Express’s loyalty program is set to make a big splash in the offline payment world by letting cardholders pay for their fares in New York City taxis with rewards points.

Through a deal with point-of-sale hardware company VeriFone, American Express will offer the new payment option in about 7,000 New York City taxis — about half of all taxis in the city.

The move marks the loyalty program’s first step in what will likely be a major expansion into the physical world. After all, AmEx partner VeriFone also has a presence in plenty of brick-and-mortar retail establishments.

“We built this tech which is very flexible and can be used in a variety of different ways,” said Leslie Berland, SVP, digital partnerships and development at American Express. “We are assessing what are the most meaningful powerful areas in the physical world to bring this to life.”

Starting with New York City taxis made sense for a few reasons. For one, there was an attractive density of cardholders in the city, specifically in Manhattan. And for cardholders in the city, taking a taxi is a relatively frequent occurrence.

Before this expansion, American Express membership rewards could be used for a variety of different purchases — from gift cards to iPads to purchases on Amazon.com, all of which had to be made online. And, other than those American Express customers who use points for Amazon.com purchases, cardholders don’t really have a way to pay for a product or service with points on a daily or even weekly basis.

That changes with this move; American Express is making its program more attractive to cardholders in the area, since they can now use points for a service they use more frequently.

And redeeming points for fares won’t require a lot of work on the part of taxi riders. They can simply choose to pay with credit, swipe their card, and then are given the choice on the payment screen to pay with Membership Rewards points if they’d like.

Fares will cost 100 points per dollar, so a $10 fare would cost taxi riders 1,000 points. For taxi drivers, there’s no difference between the payout they get for a credit-card purchase and what they’d earn for one of these new types of payment methods, American Express execs said.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20131020/american-express-to-let-card-holders-pay-nyc-taxi-fares-with-membership-rewards-points/feed/0AllThingsD Week in Review: BlackBerry Is Just Resting, and YouTube Goes Mobile Firsthttp://allthingsd.com/20131020/allthingsd-week-in-review-blackberry-is-just-resting-and-youtube-goes-mobile-first/
http://allthingsd.com/20131020/allthingsd-week-in-review-blackberry-is-just-resting-and-youtube-goes-mobile-first/#commentsSun, 20 Oct 2013 19:00:59 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=366803In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of some of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

Amid great uncertainty, BlackBerry publicly pledged this week that it’s not dead yet and, in fact, will rise again. Meanwhile, a new suitor for the once-dominant mobile company emerged: Lenovo is confidentially exploring BlackBerry’s books as it mulls a potential bid.

Since April, Yahoo has made a big push around its Facebook-esque “stream ads” that show up within the scrolling feeds of the company’s finance, sports and news pages. Sources this week said that it’s an even bigger initiative than previously thought: CEO Marissa Mayer hopes stream ads will one day be Yahoo’s greatest driver of new revenue.

This week, security outfit QuarksLab claimed that Apple’s messaging service iMessage was not secure, and could be opened up by either curious Apple employees or by a government mandate. But on Friday, Apple vehemently denied that claim.

A long list of tech titans and well known companies are supporting the nonprofit Code.org as it tries to bring computer science to more schools. But two names in its first educational program might jump out more than others: Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, who will be leading coding tutorials during Code.org’s worldwide “Hour of Code.”

After Apple CEO Tim Cook hired and then fired retail head John Browett last year, the question of who would replace him became hotly debated. Now, we finally have an answer: Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts, who will join in the spring.

It’s already possible to send cash to friends or relatives online through services like PayPal or Venmo, but this week, Square unveiled its entry in the field. In All Things Reviewed, Walt Mossberg reviewed Square Cash and found it to be “simpler and more private” than its established competitors.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20131020/allthingsd-week-in-review-blackberry-is-just-resting-and-youtube-goes-mobile-first/feed/0Square Competitor Leaf Scores $20 Million Investment From Payments Giant Heartlandhttp://allthingsd.com/20130930/square-competitor-leaf-scores-20-million-investment-from-payments-giant-heartland/
http://allthingsd.com/20130930/square-competitor-leaf-scores-20-million-investment-from-payments-giant-heartland/#commentsMon, 30 Sep 2013 23:35:50 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=361936For a while, it wasn’t clear how payments startup Leaf would get the distribution it needed to compete against Square and others trying to reinvent point-of-sale technologies for small and medium-size businesses. Just this summer, CEO Aron Schwarzkopf said in an interview that his young company had signed on fewer than 1,000 customers.

Now we have an answer.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based startup has raised a $20 million strategic investment from Heartland Payment Systems, a publicly traded payments processing company that does $2 billion in revenue annually. Heartland isn’t Starbucks, the glitzy partner of Square, but it has a huge and valuable base of small-business customers to which it can introduce the Leaf system.

Like Square, Leaf makes software that helps small businesses sort, track and analyze their in-store transactions and access that information anywhere from the cloud. But unlike Square and others, Leaf actually makes and sells its own tablet that runs on a custom version of Android so it can have end-to-end control over the experience the merchant receives.

Yet despite wanting to own how the hardware and software interact, Leaf is attempting to build an open platform on top of which others can build apps. Leaf doesn’t actually process payments; it lets its customers choose from several payment processors, including Heartland and some of its competitors. But Heartland CEO Bob Carr said he is a fan of the open approach.

“We have done some work in POS before … but it’s not the most modern architecture so we began looking around at good platforms that were consistent with our architecture,” Carr said in an interview. “We looked at many, many competitors of Leaf and felt like Leaf had the best architecture and most importantly had a shared philosophy where they have a platform that allowed merchants to do business with any number of vendors, and some of our competitors, so merchants could get exactly what they wanted.”

Earlier this year, before the investment, Heartland signed on as a reseller of the Leaf system. With the investment, Heartland will have even more incentive to sell the system and, if things go well, the company plans to ultimately retire its own point-of-sale product and recommend that its customers switch over to Leaf.

For that product handoff to take place, Leaf will have to expand its capabilities to serve different kinds of categories. Right now it is popular with companies that conduct business at a counter, such as cafes and small retail shops.

Yet the category of business that is top of mind for Heartland is table-service restaurants, of which Heartland counts more than 60,000 in the U.S. as customers. If Leaf can build the technology to support such businesses, Heartland will feel comfortable recommending the Leaf system to those customers.

Carr said that Heartland is also working to integrate some of its payroll technologies into the Leaf POS system.

Schwarzkopf said the new funds will be used to increase the size of the staff, which now totals about 50, and to invest in R&D for both hardware and software. The startup previously raised $6 million from a group of angel investors, Schwarzkopf said. The company charges $250 per tablet and $50 a month for the rest of its service.

Braintree provides businesses with a payments gateway — essentially a virtual point-of-sale — a merchant account, and other tools to accept credit card purchases online and on mobile apps. Braintree’s customer set includes Airbnb, OpenTable and Uber, making it an attractive target for PayPal as the eBay-owned company looks to grab business from young, fast-growing companies with mobile-centric businesses.

Braintree also owns Venmo, the maker of an app that lets individuals transfer money to each other. PayPal, of course, also allows for money transfers between PayPal holders. In an interview with AllThingsD, PayPal product chief Hill Ferguson said it’s too early to tell how exactly Venmo will be used at eBay.

Ferguson said Braintree would continue to operate as a separate brand and serve its existing customer set, while getting additional resources from PayPal and eBay to accelerate growth.

All 210 of Braintree’s employees, including CEO Bill Ready, will join eBay as part of the deal, Ferguson said.

The product aims to make buying things on mobile apps easier. It accomplishes this by giving shoppers the option to automatically upload their credit card information into the app by logging in with with their Facebook account info, as long as the shopper has previously bought something on Facebook using the credit card.

When AllThingsD first broke the news of the product, we explained that it could be viewed as competitive with PayPal, since both Facebook and PayPal are both now pushing what are essentially “buy with us” buttons on checkout pages.

On the other hand, Facebook is merely passing along payment info to the merchants and not actually getting involved with processing the transaction — the action by which PayPal and its competitive set make their money. So in this way, Facebook is not currently going after PayPal revenue directly.

Braintree is part of the test because the first two apps to integrate AutoFill — JackThreads and the photo app Mosaic — use it to accept payments. Interestingly, PayPal is rumored to be an acquirer of Braintree.

Stripe is part of the test because at least one of its customers who uses Stripe to accept credit cards will soon integrate the Facebook checkout button into its mobile app as part of the test.

Now comes PayPal. The vast majority of PayPal’s payment volume is initiated by people clicking a “Checkout With PayPal” button or some other PayPal-branded button on either eBay or its customers’ e-commerce sites and apps. In short, when PayPal processes a payment, it wants the shopper to know that they are using PayPal, whereas Stripe and Braintree for the most part work in the background. (Braintree is trying to push its Venmo Touch button on mobile apps, but adoption is still in its relatively early days).

It would seem strange, then, that PayPal would now reverse its stance and start ceding shopping checkout real estate to Facebook.

So I asked PayPal and Facebook how exactly this integration will work.

“PayPal and Facebook already have a strong and long-standing relationship working together across Facebook’s payments business,” PayPal spokesperson Anuj Nayar wrote in an emailed statement. “We are planning to extend this relationship with support for Autofill with Facebook. We’ll share more details closer to when it will be integrated.”

So, no details yet. I moved on to Facebook to perchance fill me in.

“They have committed to participate in the test,” Facebook spokesperson Tera Randall wrote about PayPal in an email. “We are still working with them on the integration details and design.”

Will the Facebook button replace a PayPal button on participating apps?

“Don’t know that yet. Still working on the design,” she said. “We are still very early.”

The partnership is surprising for another reason: PayPal has conducted its own research into whether shoppers want to mix their social identity with payment info, according to PayPal president David Marcus, and concluded that there isn’t much interest in such a combination.

“We’ve done a bunch of trials and seen in general — not specific to Facebook — that people are generally pretty reluctant in combining payments with social identity,” Marcus told me in a recent interview. “We did test groups and users groups and wanted to try to build something around that. But there was a certain reluctance from people mixing social and money.”

It seems, then, that we’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out exactly how this mystery partnership will work and why it makes sense for both sides.

In the meantime, it’s easy to see why certain parts of both companies would want to portray each other as partners instead of potential competitors. For one, PayPal parent company eBay’s stock dropped three percent on the day news about Facebook’s test checkout product broke.

And, for Facebook, as a public company, not much good can come out of raising expectations for a fledgling product which is the social network’s debut in the payments world outside of its walled garden.

Yet the combination of Facebook’s massive user base, ad business and an autofill checkout product could prove quite the payments disruptor down the line for commerce companies that want a payment provider that can also bring in substantial new business.

This is, undoubtedly, a fact that everyone in the payments world, including Facebook “partner” PayPal, can’t ignore. Or, really, shouldn’t.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20130925/solving-the-mystery-around-the-new-facebook-paypal-partnership/feed/0Facebook Quietly Rolls Out Its Mobile Payments "Autofill" Producthttp://allthingsd.com/20130923/facebook-quietly-rolls-out-its-payments-autofill-product/
http://allthingsd.com/20130923/facebook-quietly-rolls-out-its-payments-autofill-product/#commentsMon, 23 Sep 2013 22:00:46 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=360349Facebook’s next payments experiment is making its public debut.

Beginning on Monday evening, Facebook will make that product public, slowly rolling it out to its billion-strong user network.

It’s (aptly) named “Autofill with Facebook,” and it’s a simple yet seemingly useful proposition. If you’ve stored your address and credit card information on Facebook, retail apps partnered with the company in the pilot program — currently only Jack Threads and Mosaic — will display a small drop-down prompt when hitting the payment info screen upon checkout.

Hit the autofill button, and the app will snatch your info from your Facebook-connected account and fill in the form.

Facebook positions the move as a way to reduce friction in mobile payments, one of the most difficult and frustrating areas for retailers to convert online retail perusers into paying customers. The small screen and lack of keyboard proves too much work for the casual smartphone shopper. Perhaps Facebook’s new tool could remove some of that friction. (And I’m sure it will, as it seems to work well.)

Still, the product has the potential to disrupt mobile payments beyond the autofill capability. Commerce businesses are always looking for new customers. Now, Facebook can pitch others on the fact that Facebook ads can be used to drive new customers to mobile purchases, optimized for those very Facebook users.

In short, the pitch is: We find you new customers and make it as easy as possible for them to make their first transaction. As a result, other payments companies are watching this development closely.

Right now the test is very small, but Facebook aims to scale the program out as it tests functionality with users and signs more retail partners.

Jason Del Rey contributed to this report.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20130923/facebook-quietly-rolls-out-its-payments-autofill-product/feed/0New York City Offering More Mobile Payment Options for Taxis, With Hailo Jumping On Boardhttp://allthingsd.com/20130905/new-york-city-offering-more-mobile-payment-options-for-taxis-with-hailo-jumping-on-board/
http://allthingsd.com/20130905/new-york-city-offering-more-mobile-payment-options-for-taxis-with-hailo-jumping-on-board/#commentsThu, 05 Sep 2013 15:21:18 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=356220E-hail app Hailo is now using VeriFone’s API to offer in-app payments for New York City taxi riders. In other words, a taxi customer can now both hail and pay for the cab using the Hailo app — provided that the driver is using Hailo, too — while Hailo uses VeriFone’s system on the back end to process the payments. The new Hailo feature comes on the heels of VeriFone announcing its payment app for NYC taxis a couple weeks ago; VeriFone is one of two payments companies that processes all the credit card transactions for New York City taxicab rides.
]]>http://allthingsd.com/20130905/new-york-city-offering-more-mobile-payment-options-for-taxis-with-hailo-jumping-on-board/feed/0Menlo Ventures Leads $24 Million Investment in Mobile Bill-Payment Startup Checkhttp://allthingsd.com/20130904/353966/
http://allthingsd.com/20130904/353966/#commentsWed, 04 Sep 2013 12:00:35 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=353966Check, formerly Pageonce, has secured $24 million in a Series C round led by Menlo Ventures. The company is the maker of the Check – Bills & Money mobile bill-payment app, which currently sits at No. 26 on Apple’s list of free finance apps. Past investors Morgenthaler Ventures and Pitango Venture Capital also participated in the round, which brings total funding to $49 million.
]]>http://allthingsd.com/20130904/353966/feed/0Mobile Fourth Wave: The Evolution of the Next Trillion Dollarshttp://allthingsd.com/20130826/mobile-fourth-wave-the-evolution-of-the-next-trillion-dollars/
http://allthingsd.com/20130826/mobile-fourth-wave-the-evolution-of-the-next-trillion-dollars/#commentsMon, 26 Aug 2013 20:15:01 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=353654

We are entering the golden age of mobile. Mobile has become the most critical tool to enhance productivity and drive human ingenuity and technological growth. And the global mobile market will reach $1.65 trillion in revenue this year. Over the next decade, that revenue number will more than double. If we segment the sources of this revenue, there will be a drastic shift over the course of the next 10 years. During the last decade, voice accounted for over 55 percent of the total revenue, data access 17 percent, and the over-the-top and digital services a mere three percent. Over the next decade, we expect mobile digital services to be the leading revenue-generating category for the industry, with approximately 30 percent of the total revenue. Voice will represent less than 21 percent.

There is already a significant shift in revenue structures for many players. The traditional revenue curves of voice and messaging are declining in most markets. Mobile data access, while still in its infancy in many markets, is starting to face significant margin pressure. As such, the industry has to invest in building a healthy ecosystem on the back of the fourth wave — the OTT and digital services. The revenue generated on the fourth wave is going to be massive, but much more distributed than the previous curves. It will end up being a multi-trillion-dollar market in a matter of a decade — growing much faster and scaling to much greater heights than previous revenue curves.

Vodafone, one of the biggest mobile operators in the world, recently reported that in each of its 21 markets, voice and messaging declined (YOY). In some markets, like Italy, even the data access segment suffered negative growth. However, what was more disturbing was that the increase in access revenue didn’t negate the decline in voice and messaging revenue in any market. The net revenue declined in every single market, no matter which geography it belonged to. The net effect was that the overall revenue declined by nine percent, despite data access revenue growing by eight percent, because the overall voice and messaging revenue streams suffered double-digit losses. Once the access revenue started to decline (and it is already happening to some of the operators), these companies will have to take some drastic measures to attain growth. The investment and a clear strategy on the fourth wave will become even more urgent. They will have to find a way to become Digital Lifestyle Solution Providers.

So, what is the mobile fourth wave, and who are the dominant players today? The fourth wave is not a single entity or a functional block like voice, messaging or data access, but is made up of dozens of new application areas, some of which have not even been dreamt up yet. As such, this portfolio of services requires a different skill set for both development and monetization. Another key difference in the competitive landscape is that the biggest competitors for these services (depending on the region) might not be another operator but the Internet players who are well funded, nimble and very ambitious. The services range from horizontal offerings such as mobile cloud; commerce and payments; security; analytics; and risk management to mobile being tightly integrated with the vertical industries such as retail, health, education, auto, home, energy and media. Mobile will change every vertical from the ground up, and that’s what will define the mobile fourth wave.

In the past, the Top 10 players by revenue were always mobile operators. If we take a look at the Top 10 players by revenue on the fourth wave, there are only five operators on the list. The Internet players like Apple, Google, Amazon, Starbucks and eBay are generating more revenue on this curve than some of the incumbent players. However, some of the operators like AT&T, KDDI, NTT DoCoMo, Telefonica and Verizon have been investing steadily on the fourth curve for some time. The two Japanese operators on the list have even started to report the digital revenue in their financials.

Just as data represents 50 percent or more of their overall revenue, we expect that, for some of these operators, digital will represent more than 50 percent of their data revenue within five years. Relatively smaller operators like Sprint, Turkcell, SingTel and Telstra are also investing in new service areas that will change how operators see their opportunities, competition and revenue streams.

This shift to digital has larger implications, as well. Countries with archaic labor laws that don’t afford companies the flexibility needed to be digital players are going to be at a disadvantage. It is one thing to have figured out the strategy and the areas to invest in, and it is completely another to execute with the focus and tenacity of an upstart. If companies are not able to assemble the right talents to pursue the virgin markets, someone else will. Such players will see decline in their revenues and become targets for M&A. Some of this is already evident in the European markets, which are also plagued by economic woes. Regulators will have a tough task ahead of them in evaluating some unconventional M&As in the coming years.

The shift to digital will also have an impact on the rest of the ecosystem. The infrastructure providers will have to develop expertise in services that can be sold in partnership with the operators. Device OEMs without a credible digital-services portfolio will find it hard to compete just on product or on price. The Internet players will have to form alliances to find distribution and scale. The emergence of the fourth wave is good news for startups. Instead of just looking toward Google or Apple, the exit route now includes the operator landscape, as well. In fact, some of the operators have been making strategic acquisitions in specific segments over the last few years — Telefonica acquired AxisMed, Brazil’s largest chronic-care management company; Verizon acquired Hughes Telematics; and SingTel acquired Amobee.

For any telecom operator looking to enter the digital realm, the strategic options and road map are fairly clear. First, it has to solidify and protect its core business and assets. A great broadband network is the table stakes to be considered a player in the digital ecosystem. Depending on the financial condition of the operator, the non-core assets should be slowly spun off or sold to potential buyers so that the company can squarely focus on preserving the core and on launching the digital business with full force. The digital business requires a portfolio management approach that requires a completely different mindset and skillset to navigate the competitive landscape.

The first three revenue growth curves have served the industry well, but now it is time for the industry to refocus its energies on the fourth curve that will completely redefine the mobile industry, its players and the revenue opportunities. Several new players will start to emerge that will create new revenue from applications and services that transform every industry vertical that contributes significantly to the global GDP. As players like Apple and Google continue to lead, mobile operators will have to regroup, collaborate and refocus to become digital players.

There will be hardly any vertical that is not transformed by the confluence of mobile broadband, cloud services and applications. In fact, the very notion of computing has changed drastically. The use of tablets and smartphones instead of PCs has altered the computing ecosystem. Players and enterprises who aren’t gearing up for this enormous opportunity will get assimilated.

The future of mobile is not just about the platform, but about what’s built on the platform. It is very clear that the winners will be defined by how they react to the fourth wave that will shape mobile industry’s next trillion dollars.

Chetan Sharma is founder and president of Chetan Sharma Consulting, and is one of the leading strategists in the mobile industry. He has served as an adviser to senior executive management of several Fortune 100 companies in the wireless space, including each of the Top 6 global mobile data operators.

Mark your calendars, Apple and Android upgraders: Last weekend, we learned that the next iPhone will be unveiled on Sept. 10 (a date already shared by no fewer than three other tech events). On Friday, HTC announced that its flagship phone, the HTC One, is finally coming to Verizon next week.

Lauren Goode reviewed the Lumia 1020, Nokia’s new smartphone with a 41-megapixel camera: “I was impressed by its camera,” she writes, “… But it’s important to keep in mind that the Lumia 1020 is a phone first, camera second.”

Amazon has never divulged Kindle sales numbers, but Morgan Stanley estimated in a new report that the company will sell $4.5 billion worth of Kindle e-readers and tablets this year, up 26 percent from 2012.

In other Amazon news, the company is hiring for a warehouse in New Jersey. Details are still sketchy, but the job listings may indicate a New York City future for its grocery-delivery business, AmazonFresh.

Unlike some weeks, when the company makes news itself, two outsiders made news on Apple’s behalf this week: First, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said the future of an Apple without Steve Jobs is not a mystery.

Then, billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn (who, on a separate note, just lost his bid to stop a Dell buyout vote) made a large investment in Apple. That announcement sent Apple shares way up and over the $500 mark for the first time since January. Icahn said the shares were undervalued and that Apple should buy them back at $525 a pop.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20130818/atd-week-in-review-elon-musks-hyperloop-plans-and-zyngas-new-org-chart/feed/0Groupon Brings Payments Product to Verifone Credit Card Terminals in Bid for Mass Adoptionhttp://allthingsd.com/20130814/groupon-brings-payments-product-to-verifone-credit-card-terminals-in-bid-for-mass-adoption/
http://allthingsd.com/20130814/groupon-brings-payments-product-to-verifone-credit-card-terminals-in-bid-for-mass-adoption/#commentsWed, 14 Aug 2013 14:02:22 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=350897Small businesses that use credit card terminals from Verifone and Ingenico can now use Groupon for payments processing, the company announced today. Previously, merchants could only use Groupon Payments via mobile phones and tablets. Business owners can configure existing Verifone and Ingenico credit card terminals or purchase or rent new Verifone devices from Groupon.
]]>http://allthingsd.com/20130814/groupon-brings-payments-product-to-verifone-credit-card-terminals-in-bid-for-mass-adoption/feed/0E-Hailing Yellow Cabs Is the New Black … Or Is It?http://allthingsd.com/20130805/e-hailing-yellow-cabs-is-the-new-black-or-is-it/
http://allthingsd.com/20130805/e-hailing-yellow-cabs-is-the-new-black-or-is-it/#commentsMon, 05 Aug 2013 13:00:05 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=348744Sometime in the late 1800s, a human being hailed the first motorized taxi. I don’t know how it was done — whether it was summoned in advance or if the person simply raised a hand on a street corner — but I’m pretty certain it wasn’t done with a mobile phone.

More recently, people have been hailing cabs using smartphone apps, both in the U.S. and abroad. These apps are meant to help you flag down a cab in markets where taxis are in low supply. Or, you can time your cab, so it will arrive just as you’re stepping out the front door or leaving a bar or restaurant.

On the flip side, the apps can help drivers fill their down time with more passengers.

In case you’ve missed it, these apps have caused quite a stir in some municipalities. Both taxicab and black-town-car groups have lobbied against various forms of so-called “e-hail” apps. In New York City, where I live, the political and regulatory environment had kept the apps out for a while. Now they’re finally part of a test pilot in New York, in which only certain features of the apps are available.

So I’ve been using Hailo, Taxi Magic and Uber Taxi for the past week to hail licensed taxicabs. They’re all free to download, and are available on iOS and Android mobile devices.

I was looking forward to trying them out here in my home city, which has more than 13,200 licensed taxicabs. Unfortunately, they’re sort of useless here in their current form.

On many occasions, while I was trying to locate cab drivers through the apps, other people would step in front of me, stick their hands up and snag a cab in less than 30 seconds. Or, I would request a cab through an app, and three available taxis would whiz by.

But the biggest sticking point right now is the lack of e-payments through the apps. In almost every other city where “e-hail” apps are available — London, Dublin, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, to name a handful — you not only hail through the app, you also pay through it. This creates a more seamless experience.

For example, I’ve used an app called Flywheel a few times in San Francisco. I hailed with my smartphone, set a tip through the phone, and exited the cab without ever exchanging cash with the driver or swiping a credit card. Afterward, I was emailed a digital receipt.

In cities where you can pay for your ride through the app, a small fee of $1 or $1.50 might be placed on top of your fare.

In order for these apps to offer e-payments in licensed New York City taxicabs, they are currently required to link to one of the two payments-processing companies (VeriFone and Creative Media Technologies) that are already established in cabs. I’m told that this feature might be coming to one or some of the apps soon.

A bit of background on them: Hailo hails from the U.K., which is still its biggest market. Uber is a San Francisco-based company best known for its handy app that hails black town cars; Uber Taxi is part of the same app, but books less expensive taxicabs instead of town cars. Virginia-based Taxi Magic claims to have the biggest footprint of all three, and is available in 60 cities across the U.S.

The apps work by using your GPS location to pinpoint you on a map within each app. You can also enter a specific street address. They’ll give you an estimate of how long it will take a taxi driver, who has to be using a driver-specific version of the app, to pick you up. This is usually within three to 10 minutes.

The apps send text messages along the way to keep you updated on the driver’s progress. Most also give you a direct phone number for the cabbie, in case you need to give more specific directions, or cancel. There’s often a fee associated with a last-minute cancellation after you’ve already confirmed a cab through the app.

The first time I tried e-hailing, I was standing on a street corner on the Upper West Side, and an available cab just rolled up in front of me. So I didn’t bother requesting a cab through an app that time.

The next time I was on that same corner, Hailo and Taxi Magic couldn’t locate any available cabs. Uber Taxi found a cab for me. Since I’ve used Uber’s town-car-hailed service before, this process was familiar to me. The main difference was not being entirely certain whether the Yellow Cab that pulled up in front of me was an Uber taxi.

After a few minutes, a taxi driver stopped in front of me, asked if I was using Uber, and I hopped in the cab. That was the extent of the verification process.

On another occasion, I successfully booked a Hailo cab. But again, I kept seeing available cabs pass by while I waited.

I also tried my luck in busier midtown Manhattan. I booked an Uber taxi again (still no Taxi Magic cabs available). In the app, I watched a small taxi icon make its way toward me on a map, but it seemed to take an indirect route. Eventually, the taxi stopped — nearly a block away from where I was. So I ended up walking down the street to meet the driver, while available cabs drove by.

Of the three apps, I had the best experience with Uber Taxi. It’s the one that most frequently had drivers available, and the one I relied on when I was stuck in a remote part of Manhattan on a rainy day.

I was never able to book a cab using the Taxi Magic app.

To be fair, each app has some features that you wouldn’t get from just hailing a taxi. Hailo, for example, has a note-taking section in the app. I could note whether my cab ride was for business or personal reasons, and jot down other details about the ride. Taxi Magic lets you book cabs from the Web — not just from the mobile app.

And while Uber’s town-car service has faced opposition in some cities, from a customer perspective, it’s good to have that option within the same app. If you’re ever in a jam and you can’t get a yellow taxicab, you can always splurge and request a town car.

Mobile apps have enabled a whole new world of modern transportation — whether for town cars, taxicabs or ride sharing, the latest of which has been a real point of contention in cities like San Francisco.

But in New York City, the tech hasn’t yet made a real difference. Hailing a cab the “old-fashioned” way is still your best bet.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20130805/e-hailing-yellow-cabs-is-the-new-black-or-is-it/feed/0As Q2 Earnings Approaches, the Street Stays Bullish on Facebook's Mobile Prospectshttp://allthingsd.com/20130724/as-q2-earnings-approaches-the-street-stays-bullish-on-facebooks-mobile-prospects/
http://allthingsd.com/20130724/as-q2-earnings-approaches-the-street-stays-bullish-on-facebooks-mobile-prospects/#commentsWed, 24 Jul 2013 13:30:25 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=345555Facebook’s S-1 filing in early 2012 came with a rude awakening we’re all quite familiar with by now: The world is going mobile, and Facebook’s ad business needed to adapt fast in order to keep up with it.

The Street’s consensus calls for earnings per share of 14 cents on revenue of $1.62 billion, an estimate up from the EPS of 12 cents on revenue of $1.18 billion reported during Q2 of last year.

“While quarterly results at FB will likely remain volatile, we remain bullish on the direction and growth trajectory of the company,” Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia wrote in a research note this week.

The biggest boon for some? The trending surge in Facebook’s mobile revenue figures seen in recent quarters.

Mobile revenue accounted for nearly 30 percent of Facebook’s ad business in the first quarter of this year, which was already a jump up from 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. That’s expected by some analysts to grow, albeit slightly, to a daily run rate of nearly $5 million on mobile ads alone.

Facebook has made it clear that at least one of its more recent ad products — mobile app installation ads — has been quite successful in driving growth, and J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth expects that to continue.

“We remain bullish as we believe ad dollars are increasingly shifting to online, mobile, and social and we expect Facebook to capture a growing portion of ad budgets going forward,” Anmuth wrote in a research note.

The big unknowns are the usuals that we’ll be looking for. Will the company break out any metrics beyond its usual stats on daily and monthly active users? That may be something to watch for, given Facebook’s increasing competition for mindshare from other mobile-based sites like Snapchat, WhatsApp and International competitors like Line and KakaoTalk.

Another wild card: The oft-speculated eventual appearance of auto-play video ads in the News Feed. Bhatia and Anmuth both expect the ads to debut in the latter half of the year, a potential multibillion-dollar revenue-driving opportunity for the company. “We see online video advertising as a key incremental growth driver for FB in 2014,” Bhatia wrote.

And lastly, the payments question still remains. Driven largely by social games on the platform, Facebook’s payments business has changed much over the past two years, again a result of the sweeping shift to mobile. Zynga, which once reigned supreme as Facebook’s largest gaming partner, has taken a drastic hit as users have moved away from playing games on the desktop to more casual gaming on the phone and tablet.

As a result, Facebook’s payments revenue cut has flattened. The past year has seen Facebook try to distance itself from being too connected to Zynga, giving way to the rise of other smaller, more mobile-focused gaming outfits like King and, to a lesser extent, Wooga.

Analysts expect flat sequential revenue in the payments business, though a slight uptick in year-over-year growth.

I’ll be covering the print as it hits the wire at 1 pm PT, with a liveblog of the earnings call from my colleague Peter Kafka to follow.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20130724/as-q2-earnings-approaches-the-street-stays-bullish-on-facebooks-mobile-prospects/feed/0Khosla's Keith Rabois Talks About Going From Internet Ops to VC-Land (Video)http://allthingsd.com/20130621/khoslas-keith-rabois-talks-about-going-from-internet-ops-to-vc-land-video/
http://allthingsd.com/20130621/khoslas-keith-rabois-talks-about-going-from-internet-ops-to-vc-land-video/#commentsFri, 21 Jun 2013 16:50:02 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=335617I coasted down to Sand Hill Road yesterday to pay a quick visit to longtime Internet investor and operating executive Keith Rabois to talk about his new gig as a venture capitalist at Khosla Ventures.

Rabois — for those following the soap opera aspects of the story — left his job as COO of Square, the San Francisco online payments company, in the midst of unproven allegations of personal misconduct earlier this year with regard to accusations of sexual harassment related to a relationship he had with a Square employee.

After he left, Rabois considered a top job at Airbnb, the online rentals startup, as well as other places. But he eventually landed at the top-tier Silicon Valley VC firm because he wanted to turn his active informal investing experience as a longtime angel investor into the real deal.

It was a major shift, since Rabois has largely been a serious operator, having been the No. 2 to a string of high-profile entrepreneurs, including Peter Thiel at PayPal, Max Levchin at Slide and, most recently, Jack Dorsey at Square.

So, I decided to check in with him since he arrived in March on how he’s liking the new life of plush offices and entrepreneur hunting. One thing is clear — Rabois has been active, making about 10 investments since he got there, including making a big bet on HealthTap, a mobile medical Q&A app.

Here’s my video interview with Rabois at Khosla’s luxe HQ (by the way, we did not discuss the Square departure, as he already did so quite publicly with me several times and also in a blog post):

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20130621/khoslas-keith-rabois-talks-about-going-from-internet-ops-to-vc-land-video/feed/0Social Commerce Startup Chirpify to Power In-Stream Credit Card Purchaseshttp://allthingsd.com/20130611/social-commerce-startup-chirpify-can-now-power-in-stream-credit-card-purchases/
http://allthingsd.com/20130611/social-commerce-startup-chirpify-can-now-power-in-stream-credit-card-purchases/#commentsTue, 11 Jun 2013 12:15:55 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=330841Chirpify, the social commerce platform that lets anyone sell goods or content on social networks through tweets or comments, is now allowing its customers to accept credit card payments. Previously, the only payment method was PayPal. The Portland, Ore.-based company lets people buy things on social networks with a single tweet or comment after connecting their credit card or PayPal account to the service. Chirpify charges its enterprise customers a 2.9 percent transaction fee, plus 30 cents per transaction, according to its website.
]]>http://allthingsd.com/20130611/social-commerce-startup-chirpify-can-now-power-in-stream-credit-card-purchases/feed/0Been to Apartment Hell and Back? A New Start-Up, Cozy, Wants to Simplify Renting.http://allthingsd.com/20130606/been-to-apartment-hell-and-back-a-new-start-up-cozy-wants-to-simplify-apartment-renting/
http://allthingsd.com/20130606/been-to-apartment-hell-and-back-a-new-start-up-cozy-wants-to-simplify-apartment-renting/#commentsThu, 06 Jun 2013 14:00:45 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=329288If you’ve ever rented an apartment in certain metro areas, like New York and San Francisco, you’ve probably had a less-than-enjoyable experience. Even if you’ve found a reasonably-priced apartment, you might still have to compete with dozens of other applicants and file reams of paperwork.

That was what inspired the co-founders of Cozy, a new company that aims to take at least some of the friction out of apartment rentals. Cozy has been in the works since October, and is coming out of beta mode today.

Cozy’s main function is that of a rent-payment processor. Residential landlords pay $9 a month per unit to join Cozy and receive auto-payments each month from tenants’ bank accounts. There are no additional fees stacked on top of the monthly cost.

On the flip side, renters can access Cozy for free, and can create a personal profile that could help expedite the apartment application process. A renter’s profile could, for example, include credit scores, employment validation (like a LinkedIn account) and income information, and show references or testimonials from previous landlords.

So, instead of filling out piles of paperwork for each apartment, a renter could tell a potential landlord to look him or her up on Cozy — provided the landlord is familiar with or using the site.

Cozy is available in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. — in total, about 330 different markets. It was created by entrepreneurs Gino Zahnd and John Bragg, and so far has been seed-funded by some well-known names in tech, including the Social+Capital Partnership, Kevin Rose at Google Ventures, Gary Vaynerchuk and Jason Calacanis.

Cozy’s goal is very specific right now — it’s for renter profiles, rental applications and monthly payments only. It’s targeting smaller residential buildings, not big property management companies that oversee lots of high-rise buildings (many of which already use online rent-payment systems). Cozy doesn’t list apartments, so you’ll still spend a fair amount of your time on Craigslist. And it doesn’t process payments for other incidentals, like maintenance, or a lost-key fee, or even security deposits. Zahnd says additional payment features are in the works.

While mobile apps are also in the works, which are super helpful for apartment-seekers on the go, Cozy is currently Web-only.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20130606/been-to-apartment-hell-and-back-a-new-start-up-cozy-wants-to-simplify-apartment-renting/feed/0Email Money to Friends With Square Cash (But Only if You Work for Twitter, Pinterest or Box)http://allthingsd.com/20130520/email-money-to-friends-with-square-cash-but-only-if-you-work-for-twitter-pinterest-or-box/
http://allthingsd.com/20130520/email-money-to-friends-with-square-cash-but-only-if-you-work-for-twitter-pinterest-or-box/#commentsMon, 20 May 2013 21:58:25 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=323576Looks like Square isn’t trying to kill cash entirely — just the greenback.

The payments company is in the midst of slowly, quietly rolling out a new product — dubbed Square Cash, natch — a way to send money to folks you know (and perhaps those you don’t) over email.

The concept is fairly straightforward, according to the site’s FAQ: Draft an email to the person you want to send cash to and CC a Square-designated email as well. Stick the dollar amount of how much money you want to send in the subject line and click the send button. Your friend will receive the “cash” after they link their debit card accounts to Square, and you, the sender, are charged a flat 50 cent fee.

While the site’s landing page is slick and the concept is cool enough, Square isn’t exactly re-inventing the wheel here. You can still send folks money using a PayPal account (and not incur a fee for it if you send it as a “gift”!), and Google’s commerce wing just added a money attachment feature to Gmail as well. And there’s no shortage of startups — Venmo, Stripe and more — doing similar things in micro-payments.

But I don’t think it’s necessarily a zero-sum game. The idea for Square here, methinks, is growth: Ultimately, this could be a faster way of getting more people to link up their checking accounts to Square’s service — especially those who either aren’t a small business using the product, or haven’t discovered the magic that is using Square’s special dongle, attachable to phones, tablets and the like. And I’d say there’s no better incentive to link your debit card account up to a service than an email notification in your inbox saying you’ve got twenty bucks waiting to be redeemed.

And of course, it plays well into Square’s social schtick. It’s a social payments startup, Square would say, not just some boring e-commerce company.

Want to sign up? Not so fast: You can’t use it quite yet, as right now only a select few are in on the invite-only testing period. For now, I’ve confirmed that employees at Pinterest, Box.com and Twitter are currently the only ones in this round of invites.

“We’re excited to share Square Cash with our friends. We’ll continue to invite others to try it out in the coming weeks,” a Square spokesperson told AllThingsD.